Spiritual or sleep inducing?

A couple of weekends ago a friend and I went to see Requiem by Lemi Ponifasio's group MAU at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in the Southbank Centre, in a show presented by the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT). Some of you may know that I had gone to Vienna to see another show of Lemi's, which was supposedly based on The Tempest, and starred Maori Activist Tame Iti - I hated it. It made me think quite a bit about representing New Zealand on stage, however, and the moral obligations Theatre practitioners in Foreign language speaking countries have - with the combined German and Maori language skills of the three of us who went we would pretty much bet our life savings that the subtitles certainly didn't meet what Iti was saying on stage. But I had heard good things about Requiem, I knew it had a bigger cast, and surely it would be better?

Photograph: Tristram Kenton

No, no it couldn't. So much so I left at the half way mark.

What I saw was replication of the same conventions used in the Vienna piece - hypnotic? Yes. But to the point of putting most of those in the audience on Sunday night to sleep. Only the odd handclap, or wahine toa (warrior woman) with patu woke the majority up, in the hopes that the slow build up might be actually building up! But it didn't, and those I spoke to felt heartily disappointed that the piece did not live up to what they thought it would be - a Pacific Island/Maori style Requiem, which is generally more of a celebration of life and memories (as far as I know...)

I found the performance a little too hypnotic, and while I believe in slowing down and educating an audience, not to the point of putting them to sleep. It felt like too much of an indulgence of a droning soundscape and well disciplined dancers for my liking. But each to their own.

Since then I have been thinking quite a bit about the piece since then, and what it all means. Not so much the show itself, but the surrounding ideas behind it: it used ritualistic symbols of the Pacific Island death rituals, yes. And it was very beautiful in some parts, but a sum of beautiful parts does not a brilliant show make, particularly when they are all painstakingly slow. It seems that that the Guardian reviewer agrees with me here.

And I also got to thinking about whether this is an apt piece for Creative New Zealand to give $50,000... if we are going to only send the select few pieces overseas to represent New Zealand culturally, then I find it interesting that such an abstract piece that only the select few would like was chosen. We are increasingly seeing cultural festivals in London used as a marketing tool for that particular country - the recent India Now Festival, or the upcoming Polish Arts Festival come to mind. If New Zealand is not going to go in for a Festival, then I think it is about time some cross-government departmental meetings go on to see how the Arts can be used to show New Zealand to it's best advantage. And I'm not sure Lemi and his crew would be the best option for the money.

But then that opens up a whole new can of worms doesn't it? If we are only going to send one or two Performance pieces to represent New Zealand overseas, what do we choose?